scholarly journals High Street

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alexandra Maria Sawicka-Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Ground Plane ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Design Solution ◽  
Jane Jacobs ◽  
High Rise ◽  
High Street ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City

<p>High Street addresses the problem of disconnection between high-rise buildings and the life of the street. High-rises are often adopted as an efficient means of creating more usable space per square meter. However, their height also isolates them from the urban milieu below. This thesis investigates how to unite the two typologies by elevating the street through the high-rise. As more people are living in cities, the high-rise has become the most prevalent building type to accommodate this increasing urban density. It is important to continue to address how the built environment can enhance urban life architecturally.  This proposition investigates externalising the circulation of a ten storey apartment building in central Wellington in a way that encourages the pedestrian to come above the ground plane and gives the resident a direct connection to the outdoors. In doing so elevating the street challenges the norms of circulation design in high-rise buildings. This thesis draws on the observations of Jan Gehl, Jane Jacobs and Richard Sennett to develop a circulation space that acts a social condenser (Koolhaas 73) for the resident and the pedestrian. A series of formal experiments and case study analyses were used to further the design solution through comparison and critique. The research process revealed the tension between the need for efficiency and humaneness in the design solution and analysis showed that circulation design in high-rise buildings is often underdeveloped as a social condenser.  High Street creates a solution which three-dimensionalises the city from a pedestrian perspective and simultaneously improves the communal spaces of high-rise living. The elevated street redefines the connection between built environment and the public infrastructure of the city and a means by which the pedestrian can traverse it.</p>

scholarly journals High Street

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alexandra Maria Sawicka-Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Ground Plane ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Design Solution ◽  
Jane Jacobs ◽  
High Rise ◽  
High Street ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City

<p>High Street addresses the problem of disconnection between high-rise buildings and the life of the street. High-rises are often adopted as an efficient means of creating more usable space per square meter. However, their height also isolates them from the urban milieu below. This thesis investigates how to unite the two typologies by elevating the street through the high-rise. As more people are living in cities, the high-rise has become the most prevalent building type to accommodate this increasing urban density. It is important to continue to address how the built environment can enhance urban life architecturally.  This proposition investigates externalising the circulation of a ten storey apartment building in central Wellington in a way that encourages the pedestrian to come above the ground plane and gives the resident a direct connection to the outdoors. In doing so elevating the street challenges the norms of circulation design in high-rise buildings. This thesis draws on the observations of Jan Gehl, Jane Jacobs and Richard Sennett to develop a circulation space that acts a social condenser (Koolhaas 73) for the resident and the pedestrian. A series of formal experiments and case study analyses were used to further the design solution through comparison and critique. The research process revealed the tension between the need for efficiency and humaneness in the design solution and analysis showed that circulation design in high-rise buildings is often underdeveloped as a social condenser.  High Street creates a solution which three-dimensionalises the city from a pedestrian perspective and simultaneously improves the communal spaces of high-rise living. The elevated street redefines the connection between built environment and the public infrastructure of the city and a means by which the pedestrian can traverse it.</p>

Joy flows through the city

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-298
Author(s):  
Mary Glenn ◽  
Jude Tiersma Watson
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Global Cities ◽  
The City

People may see the pain, suffering, and injustices in the built environment before thinking of joy in the city. There are many ways of responding to the challenges facing global cities including creating rhythms and spaces of joy, identifying sources of joy, practicing kinship and mutuality as well as sharing and building joy. The gospel at its core is a revelation of the joy of Christ, a joy that is present in cities, in our cities. This article relates stories and explores scriptural themes such as shalom seeking (Jeremiah 29) that weave joy into the fabric of urban life. Joy flows like water through our lives and cities.

Socialist Schemes and Suburban Dreams

2020 ◽  
pp. 67-114
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Robert Walker
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Charles Fourier ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City ◽  
Glass Metal

Socialist reform schemes served as the dominant venue for utopian dreaming in the first half of the 1800s. Proposals for radical shifts away from urban life emerged from the minds of famous figures such as Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, whose faith in scientific progress was matched only by their hatred of the miserable industrial slum. In addition to socialist visionaries, well-meaning politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, and architects exhausted much labor, most of it futile, in their attempts to ameliorate the conditions of the rookeries of London and other cities, either by bringing parks into the city or by dispersing working-class residents into the meadows with railroads. Their goals were only realized on paper, where the futuristic terms of utopian architecture were also being set: glass, metal, mechanization, and the use of cosmopolitan ornamentation were placed before the reading public as the building forms of the great, green age to come.

Conclusion: A Future for Urban Contemporary Archaeology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krysta Ryzewski ◽  
Laura McAtackney
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Contemporary Archaeology ◽  
Jane Jacobs ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban Places

Historical, contemporary, and future-oriented urban identities are presently being challenged worldwide at an unprecedented pace and scale by the continuous influx of people into cities and the accompanying effects of deindustrialization, conflict, and social differentiation. Archaeology is unique in its capacity to contribute a materialist perspective that views recent and present-day struggles of cities as part of longer term cycles of urban life that include processes of decay, revitalization, and reclamation. The aim of this volume is to position contemporary archaeology in general, and studies of cities in particular, as central to the discipline of archaeology and as an inspiration for further interdisciplinary, materially engaged urban studies. In doing so the contributing authors collectively challenge prevailing approaches to cities. Whereas scholars have routinely conceptualized contemporary cities within the bounds of particular analytical categories, including cities as gendered, deindustrialized, global, or urban ecological units of study (see Low 1996 for an overview), the cities discussed in this volume do not fit neatly into these individual analytical units, nor do they exist outside the influence of capitalist policies or institutions (Harvey 2012: xvii). They are instead recognized by the authors as operating within increasingly globalized systems, but also, following Jane Jacobs’ concept of open cities (2011), as places that are full of alternative possibilities. Rather than adhering to particular classifications of cities, the volume’s contributions are intentionally broad and attentive to the dynamics of the local and everyday in specific urban places—the politics, people, interventions, and materialities of specific urban places and the ways in which these dynamics operate across conceptual categories, temporal boundaries, and spatial terrain. Contemporary Archaeology and the City consciously employs a critical, materially engaged perspective that considers urban centres as both discrete and networked entities that are interrelated with places beyond geopolitical city limits. While many cities have characters formed from their vibrancy and centrality, their successful functioning often also relies upon the exploitation and even ruination of peripheral and rural hinterlands. The preceding chapters are original contributions inspired by the fieldwork of archaeologists who work in Europe, North America, Africa, Australia, and Western Asia. They incorporate a diversity of perspectives from across contemporary archaeology and beyond in responding to very different national, social, institutional, and cultural contexts.

Peopling the Cities

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-53
Author(s):  
David Dickson
Keyword(s):  
Child Death ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Physical Growth ◽  
City Environment ◽  
City Population ◽  
Demographic Processes ◽  
To Come ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Uncertain Outcomes ◽  
The City

This chapter begins by describing the striking physical growth of Irish cities such as Dublin, Cork, and Belfast, then investigates the causes of such growth. It demonstrates how pre-industrial cities across Europe depended for their survival on attracting a constant flow of outsiders to come and settle. People came for a great variety of motives and faced very uncertain outcomes. The chapter then outlines the underlying demographic processes at work in Ireland and a rigorous investigation of the city population. It studies the urban-social enquiry in Ireland, and argues that all Irish cities and regional centers witnessed powerful long-term growth of population. The chapter discusses Ireland's urban life expectancy, the pernicious levels of infant and child death in the city environment, fertility change and levels, and migration and apprenticeships. It looks into the most compelling evidence on internal migration to the cities: the changing religious composition of most Irish cities.

Architecture, Materiality, and the Tactile City

2019 ◽  
pp. 136-173
Author(s):  
Benjamin Fraser
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
Circulation Patterns ◽  
The City

This chapter explores the built environment of the city at a personal scale. In a cover titled “The Comix Factory” designed for the comics magazine Raw, Dutch artist Joost Swarte employs the formal depth of comics to suggest their connection to tactile qualities of urban life in three dimensions. American Chris Ware’s ambitious boxed anthology Building Stories invites a tactile reading experience and pushes the architectural form of the comics multiframe to its limits. Also hailing from America, Mark Beyer’s transposition of his popular Amy and Jordan comic to the format of “City of Terror Trading Cards” uses tactility to implicate comics in city circulation patterns. Canadian artist Seth has been building tactile models of buildings in Dominion—the fictional setting for many of his comics. The Ghost of Gaudí by El Torres and Jesús Alonso Iglesias highlights Barcelona’s architecture.

The Townscape Movement and the Politics of Post-War Urbanism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Divya Subramanian
Keyword(s):  
Urban Life ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Jane Jacobs ◽  
New Towns ◽  
Human Scale ◽  
Architectural Review ◽  
Post War ◽  
Planning Culture ◽  
British Planning ◽  
The City

Abstract This article examines the political and aesthetic significance of the Townscape movement, an architectural and planning movement that emerged in the 1940s and advocated for urban density, individuality, and vibrant street life. Townscape’s vernacular, human-scale vision of urban life was a significant strand in post-war planning culture, one that existed alongside the archetypal forms of social democratic planning, from new towns to tower blocks. By examining the writings of key Townscape figures associated with the Architectural Review, this article argues that Townscape engaged with the tensions at the heart of the post-war social democratic project—individualism versus community, debates over expertise and authority, and responses to the culture of affluence. In doing so, it contributes to a broader urban historiography on the post-war ‘return to the city’, showing how post-war urbanism, usually depicted as an American phenomenon centred around the figure of Jane Jacobs, had its counterpart in a uniquely British planning movement.

Architecture and the Urban Life of Cairo

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Opportunity To Learn ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Urban Imaginary ◽  
Architectural Development ◽  
The City

When it comes to Cairo, there is a plethora of writing taking place amid its streets and alleyways. Trying to make sense of, and structure, such an immense output is quite a difficult task. However, this article aims to highlight some significant writings that would offer those interested in Cairo’s architecture an opportunity to learn more about the city and its built environment. My intent is also to expand the scope of the inquiry. Rather than simply focusing on specific buildings, I seek to include the broader urban context and also look at the socioeconomic conditions that gave rise to important structures. I start with a review of some major texts that have looked at the city from different perspectives and, in doing so, shed light on the city’s urban and architectural development. It is interesting to note that for the most part, authors in this section do not come from an architectural or urban-planning background. Instead they write from a historical, economic, and geographic perspective. Following this, I look at a variety of other sources and writings that have appeared in edited books and book chapters. I have also included journal articles, since they offer an in-depth examination of certain buildings and the city’s overall urban growth. In addition to writings about the city, I also sought to capture its “urban imaginary” (i.e., the extent to which its built environment has been represented by writers, filmmakers, and artists). To that end, a section is dedicated toward a review of key works and the extent to which they have shed valuable insights into Cairo’s past, present, and future. The city’s urban imaginary is also portrayed through the medium of film, which allows for a conveyance of a visual narrative that evokes the sight and sounds of the city. Here I review key articles discussing the representation of the city through cinema, which is then followed by a filmography of major movies released since the late 20th century. Last, I review online resources, offering researchers material about the city’s architecture and urban environment in the form of images, maps, and drawings, in addition to blogs discussing Cairo’s rich history as well as modern problems.

Housing as Heritage

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Non Arkaraprasertkul
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Historic Preservation ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Development Program ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Heritage Buildings ◽  
The City

Across China, the preservation and reconstruction of European-styled buildings for commercial purposes has become a trend for urban development. Drawing inspiration from established global cities, Shanghai’s local government has aimed to accommodate both modern high-rise and heritage buildings as a major part of its “city with global inspiration” urban development program. Historic preservation, however, has so far been about protecting particular structures from which only members of the urban middle class can benefit from their historic value. Then, for whom is this historic preservation? Presenting a less benign side of preservation, this chapter ethnographically examines social change in urban life as a result of urbanization, presenting how historic preservation affects urban processes vis-à-vis a sense of place in the city of Shanghai.

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